


ten birthdays in the life of bokuto koutarou

by silvercistern



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Growing Old Together, M/M, minor kuroken
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-21
Updated: 2016-09-21
Packaged: 2018-08-16 11:06:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8100091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silvercistern/pseuds/silvercistern
Summary: happy birthday, sweetheart.





	

**Author's Note:**

> i neglected all my adult responsibilities to write this. if you're in my class i apologize for not grading your discussion posts.

**_seventeen._ **

“Bokuto-san, please wait.”

The new first year setter was standing ramrod straight, hands behind his back. And he was directly in front of the locker room exit. All the other second years had left, heading to the yakiniku place where they were going to celebrate.

Celebrate _him_. Bokuto. Their new ace. Their new ace who was maybe just maybe gonna confess to Natsume Sakura if he could catch her when she left soccer practice. Which was right now.

But he couldn’t, because his little miracle setter was in the way.

Actually, had Akaashi gotten bigger? He’d grown more than a few centimeters since the spring. Bulked up a little too. But there was something about him that was still kinda… soft? He had such a girly face when he wasn’t scowling: pretty eyes, long eyelashes, full lips…

“I’m sorry to keep you from your confession, Bokuto-san, but I think you’ll find that the soccer team lets out five minutes later than we do. I imagine you want to make an entrance.”

“Oh! Thanks, Akaasee! Wait, how did you know I was gonna do that?”

Akaashi fluttered his long eyelashes, though it couldn’t have been on purpose.

“A lucky guess.”

“Well thanks, I owe ya one. Actually I think I owe you lots of ones, it’s not just the ace that wins games, y’know?”

The humility of the statement seemed lost on his teammate, whose face was impassive as ever. Or just a little less. He looked kinda nervous. But maybe also committed, like he looked when he was about to work a real hard setup and nail it anyway. And irritated. He looked like that too, but he looked like that always.

“With this time I wanted to take the opportunity to say that it has been a privilege to set for you this half year, and I hope you will allow me to continue.”

Bokuto cocked his head. Anything past “good job, Bokuto-san,” or “I believe you can do this, Bokuto-san,” was beyond Akaashi. He encouraged by tossing, most of the time. And Bokuto had to admit it was usually pretty encouraging.

But instead of leaving it at that, the setter pulled a box, delicately wrapped in pale blue, from behind his back. With a stiff bow he held it out for Bokuto to take.

“Happy birthday, senpai.”

And then he smiled.

Really smiled, small and uneven, showing teeth that weren’t very straight. Then he walked away, sneakers squeaking across the gym. Like nothing had happened. Like the world hadn’t just moved to the right at least a half inch.

And that was when Bokuto completely forgot his interest in what Natsume Sakura looked like in her underwear. In fact, he forgot who she was at all.

 

 

**_eighteen._ **

Girls were watching Akaashi. They watched him the way they watched Bokuto, only all the time and not just after a big win. Which meant they were serious about Akaashi but not serious about Bokuto at all. His dad had told him that about women at least thirty times.

The fact that girls didn’t care about him actually bothered Bokuto a whole lot less than Konoha, Komi, and Sarukui realized.

The fact that girls were paying attention to Akaashi actually bothered Bokuto a whole lot more than anyone but Kuroo had figured out. But then he and Kuroo had traded secrets. They really were the same secret, only about different people. Girls didn’t go after Kenma though, so Kuroo couldn’t really commiserate, even though he tried.

Thankfully Akaashi did not watch girls. Now that he was tall, he could easily look over their heads to ignore them, which Bokuto wanted him to do. But he didn’t. His reactions were somewhere in the middle. He didn’t seek them out, but he listened attentively when they came up with excuses to talk to him. Stupid excuses like, “Akaashi-kuuuun can you help me with my English homework?” “Akaashi-kuuuuun, I made chocolates, would you like one?”  “Akaashi-kuuuuuuuun, would you like to come to a mixer with us at the yakiniku place?”

It was infuriating because _Bokuto_ wanted Akaashi’s English help. Even though he was already getting it every Sunday afternoon. He also wanted to give Akaashi chocolates, which he did sometimes, only they weren’t made from scratch. Usually it was after he’d eaten so many himself that he had a stomachache. But still. He wanted to go to the yakiniku place with him more often, but Akaashi said they could only go once a month because it was too expensive.

He wanted girls to leave Akaashi alone for one. single. day. For instance today, his birthday, so he could pretend maybe… well, there was no point in pretending _that_ , but at least he could pretend his grouchy, beautiful setter wasn’t constantly on the verge of getting a grouchy, beautiful girlfriend. A girlfriend who would take his time and attention and maybe he’d smile one of those rare little smiles at her every day. Maybe he’d hug her every morning the way he’d hugged Bokuto that time at Nationals, so tight and warm and happy and no one could really _blame_ Bokuto for picking him up and spinning him around, could they?

It was what teammates did when they were celebrating.

But at the end of the day when he was making his way to the gym, he found that no, girls had not left Akaashi alone at all. In fact, one was confessing to him on the lawn between the school and the gym, her black hair in a perfect bun exposing a beautiful neck. Like a swan. She held herself with Akaashi-perfect posture and they’d probably make beautiful swan children together and Bokuto would have to be their weird owl uncle because he couldn’t just say no since it was Akaashi.

But he’d hate it.

The confession took a long time, maybe because he was spying on it from the corner of a building. At the end, the girl gave Akaashi a small wave then turned, her pretty eyes calm and happy. He had no idea what Akaashi looked like because he was too far around the corner to see.

“Bokuto-san.”

Akaashi did not sound like he was crying. Or happy. He sounded more annoyed than usual. And he looked like it too when he came around the corner, holding his bag tight like it was going to fly away.

“Hey, hey, hey, Akaashi, I was just here to see if you wanted to come to practice… or whatever…”

That had maybe not been a very good excuse.

“Bokuto-san, I like you.”

Akaashi was bordering on furious and Bokuto was sort of confused, because Akaashi never got this mad, especially when he was confessing to him, which had up to this point been never.

“Um.”

“This is not how I intended to share my feelings, but since you are stalking me, I thought I might put your mind at ease so you will stop.”

“Huh?”

They were now standing very close, which had to be Akaashi’s doing, since Bokuto’s feet were made out of chunks of concrete. Akaashi had been kind of quiet once. Quiet and beautiful and blunt. Now he was sort of… everything.   

He was also grabbing his tie.

He was pulling it down, gently, but also hard till their faces were so close. He had a few pimples on his forehead at this distance, confirming he was a real person. His eyes still made Bokuto’s breath catch, and he couldn’t stop looking at his lips. They were as plump as they had been yesterday in the locker room when he’d stared at them until Washio had stopped him with a disapproving grunt.

“Bokuto-san, despite my anger at being stalked, I like you in the sort of way that means I’m going to kiss you unless you tell me otherwise.”

He wasn’t about to let Akaashi kiss him first for their first kiss. For Bokuto’s first kiss altogether.  

Of course he wasn’t about to break both their noses either but unfortunately that’s what ended up happening.

The doctor at the hospital gave him a lollypop because it was his birthday.

 

 

**_nineteen._ **

“I don’t think either of us know how to do this,” Bokuto scratched his bare chest because he was nervous, then leaned back against his bed. “So I just want to talk about it a little more. So we don’t get hurt.”

That was not the only reason.

“Did you read that article I sent?” Akaashi was leaning against the desk, focused on filing his nails. There was not a lot of room in Bokuto’s shared apartment, let alone his bedroom. But all of it was between them. “The one with the pictures?”

He had _started_ reading it. But then things had escalated because the bottom in the pictures kind of looked like Akaashi, if Bokuto closed his eyes and thought about Akaashi. Which he had done every time.

“Yeah, I uh, read all of it. Like fourteen times.”

Akaashi put his nail file away and pulled out his laptop. “Since you couldn’t get through it, we could watch some porn.”

Bokuto blushed, “Porn’s not very realistic, Keiji! They use spit as lube.”

“I thought it might put you in the mood.”

No, it would make him even more nervous than he was.

“I am in the mood!” he sputtered.

“Why are we two meters apart then? And you’re not remotely erect.”

He wasn’t wrong. How he knew that was a little unnerving but he wasn’t wrong.

“Well, I just, I wanna make sure we don’t fuck this up and hurt each other!”

“Koutarou, if you don’t want to have penetrative sex, we do not have to. I simply thought this was what you wanted for your birthday since you described it to me in both sexy and unsexy detail on eighteen different occasions.”

Guilt coiled into his gut where all the eager turned on-ness was supposed to be. He curled up into a ball of sex failure, “I do want it, just…”

Before he even realized it, Akaashi was next to him, running his long fingers through his hair.

“I’m sorry. That was harsher than I intended. We don’t have to have anal sex right now. Or ever.”

“Yeah but you want to. Really bad; you’ve been hard since you got here. I noticed.” He felt proud of his observational skills, ignoring the fact that Akaashi’s jeans were tight and anyone would have noticed. “I don’t wanna let you down.”

His boyfriend coughed, his cheeks erupting in flaming red. “The only thing unsatisfying about our sexual relationship is that the distance keeps us from touching regularly. So perhaps when we’re together I do get a bit excited...”

Bokuto leaned into Akaashi’s touch, feeling his neatly filed fingernails scraping across his scalp. It was okay because they were both embarrassed. And it wasn’t so bad being embarrassed with each other instead of by themselves.

“I love you.”

“I love you too. And it’s still your birthday. I bought new underwear. They’re very small and quite tight. As an alternative to fucking me, I’d like to take my clothes off so you can see them, while I blow you. Or I can jerk off while you watch and then you can fuck my thighs. We have quite a few options.”

 

 

 **_twenty_ ** _._

Akaashi was loud in bed and it was really hot and really embarrassing. He was especially loud when he was drunk. And now both of them were drunk, but Akaashi was a lightweight so he was drunker even though he’d had like two beers, and Bokuto had maybe five?

He’d forgotten.

But his roommate had also come back with them after the small celebration. Bokuto was sober enough to know that the string of blissed out curses coming out of Akaashi’s mouth as he bounced up and down on Bokuto’s cock was something that Oikawa was probably writing down word for word to use against both of them later.

“Koutarou?” Akaashi slowed down and whispered into his ear, sloppy and earnest, “Something wrong? Should I stop?”

Oh who gave a fuck about Oikawa?

Bokuto grabbed his hips and started bouncing him even harder. Things had been kind of taking a while because of the alcohol and to be honest he was sort of exhausted, being mostly turned on for so long.

“Koutarou…” Akaashi squirmed and shifted and all of a sudden everything felt really good. “I-I-I love you so much. Koutarou, I–”

“I love you too, baby. _Shit_ you’re so tight like this.” He felt like he could come, _finally_ , and he reached down to push his boyfriend over the edge too, but Keiji wasn’t nearly as hard as expected him to be. Like two thirds of the way, maybe.

Akaashi put his forehead on his shoulder. He was panting, like he was too worn out to move himself. Even drunk, Bokuto could tell that the atmosphere wasn’t very sexy anymore and he was starting to worry that he’d hurt him or–

“No,” Akaashi gasped for breath, “you don’t understand. I never tell you enough or the way you want to hear.” There was a hitch in his voice that sounded a lot like crying.  

Bokuto did not think it was okay to be inside a crying person. He lifted Akaashi up and then sat him back down in his lap so they weren’t having sex anymore. And his balls were gonna hurt like hell pretty shortly but that was fine they could have belated birthday sex tomorrow.

It didn’t just sound like crying now. Akaashi’s head was buried in his shoulder and he was full on drunk sobbing. Bokuto had only ever seen him cry once, when the Akaashi family dog had died and even then was a restrained sort of thing, lots of clenched fists and holding back and single tears streaming down cheeks.

“You tell me every- every day h-how lucky you are to have me,” Akaashi sputtered out the words in between his tears. “Very specific details as to why you love me. And I want to, I want to, there are lists in my head, so many lists but everything I try to say is so… _detached_. Even on your birthday all I can do is let you fuck me and hope you understand how much I–.”

Wait just a second, was this some kind of _duty_?

“Look, if you don’t want me to–”

“No. That’s not what I meant. I just want to tell you, the way you tell me.”

Bokuto wasn’t quite sure he was following the conversation correctly but it seemed like Akaashi was talking about saying romantic stuff. Kind of.

“I didn’t fall in love with myself, Keiji,” he raised his eyebrows incredulously.

“You were already in love with yourself when I met you,” Akaashi sassed through his tears which made him cough a lot.

Well crying or not, that was a little harsh.

Bokuto leaned forward to drop Akaashi on the bed just hard enough to make him bounce. Then he pulled the sheet over both of them. “Hey, hey, hey there drunkie,” he cuddled in close, trying to ignore the fact that his balls had been replaced by annoyingly heavy rocks. “Has this really been bugging you?”

Akaashi turned and buried himself into his chest. There was a long pause and Bokuto wondered if maybe he should have given him some space or something. He didn’t know. He didn’t know how to deal with Akaashi like this because Akaashi didn’t _act_ like this normally. He was definitely an emotional drunk, but he’d never straight up cried. Usually he just giggled.

“Yes. It has.” At least now his voice was just damp, instead of weepy.

Everybody acted like Bokuto was the dumb one and maybe he was mostly, but right now... “Keiji, you tell me things you think about me all the time.”

“Not with any sort of sweetness,” his breath was tickling the hairs on Bokuto’s chest. “Not the way you make me feel warm and loved. Just cold and unfeeling. I’m so bad at feelings.”

“Baby, I know you’re drunk, but this is the stupidest thing you’ve ever said.” 

“I am also aware of how stupid it sounds,” Akaashi was trying to speak normally, but sounded even drunker, “but that doesn’t make it go away. I have a new respect for how you handle life, dealing with this constantly.”

“See? You say stuff like that all the time, and it’s like, halfway kinda rude, but I know you also mean it and so I can’t make it fake in my head. If you were all romantic and stuff, I’d stop believing you, I think. You do stuff. That’s how I know you love me.”

There wasn’t much more to say after that. He just stroked Akaashi’s spine with light touches from his hairline to his tailbone, and pretty soon they were both asleep.

 

“Are you making him pancakes??” Oikawa’s voice carried into the bathroom when Bokuto turned off the faucet. “I was pretty sure you could barely cook to save your life, Keiji-chan.”

“Kenma taught me. I’ve been making them for myself every morning to improve.”

“Just how long have you been practicing? Those things look amazing.”

“Two months."

 

**_twenty-five_ ** _._

“I’m sorry, Bokuto-san, but you have one of the worst SLAP tears I’ve ever seen. That’s compounded with the expansive stress fracture in your rotator cuff. The damage is extensive.”

Your career wasn’t supposed to end on your birthday.

He sat alone in the examination room. There were supposed to be tears. He was supposed to at least be trying not to cry, but all he could do was look at his hands and hear the same slap over and over and over again, hand against leather. Inhale the scent of sweat and aerosol cans and that weird plastic-y smell of new nets.

All over.

He should have gotten more massages. Done more stretching. Iced his shoulder after every practice. Eaten more of that terrible nanohana shit that Akaashi loved.

It had been half an hour when the nurse made him leave. She was nice enough about it, but she made him all the same. When he walked out of the enormous sliding doors, the kind made for a gurney to get pushed through, Oikawa was still there. His head was in his hands, pulling at his hair really hard. When he heard the noise, his head shot up and his eyes were bloodshot.

“Akaashi and Kuroo are on their way home, but like you said, Akaashi is in Kyoto and Kuroo is in Osaka so it’s going to take a few hours.”

“Don’t matter,” Bokuto found himself saying. Because it didn’t.

Oikawa’s face turned pale, the kind people had right before they passed out.

“Can’t play,” Bokuto wanted him to stop looking like that. “It’ll just do this,” he tipped his chin down to the sling his arm was resting in, “again and again till I can’t move my shoulder anymore. No Olympics for me. Or any volleyball really.”

His setter looked at the ground for a while.

“Let’s get a drink.”

“It’s ten in the morning and you got afternoon practice.”

“I said, let’s get a drink, Kou-chan.”

 

They’d bypassed the bitter humor part of being drunk around eleven, and by lunchtime they’d reached the sad part. Only in this case it was a super sad part because the whole reason for Bokuto’s existence was gone.

“I dunno who I even am without volleyball, Tooru,” Bokuto hiccupped. “Can I call you Tooru?”

“It’s my _name_ , Kou-chan. Do you think I come up with these awful nicknames because I want everybody to call me ‘Oikawa-san’ all the time?”

“Always thought it was some kinda powerplay.”

“Well…” Oikawa tapped his chin, “yes, it’s that too, I suppose. But, allow me to tell you who you are with or without volleyball.”

Bokuto burped miserably, not expecting much.

“You are generous. You lift everyone around you up when its least expected and you carry them where they need to go. You are enthusiastic about everything you love in a way that makes you extremely vulnerable, but you do it anyway. You practice incessantly, because you know you can always improve. Despite your bluster, no one is too small for you to help. You are just as humble as you are full of yourself. And you inspire me to be a better player, a better person. So if your life is over, mine never started to begin with.”

“Wha…” there were so many tears he didn’t know what to do with them.

“Keiji-chan isn’t the only pretty setter who can make lists about you, you know.”

He wanted him to be there so bad.

“I hurt my knee early in just before university, the year I wasn't on the team. I thought my career was over. So having been there, I can promise you this. When you wake up tomorrow, life is going to be misery. That misery is not going to stop for some time. You will try to destroy pieces of your life you may never get back. But in the end, you’re going to pick yourself up and move on because _that is who you are_ , Bokuto.”

Kenma found them crying on each other a few minutes later. Almost immediately after that, the two of them fell asleep in a pile. He sat on the other side of the booth playing Pokemon on his DS, slowly sipping beer after beer and nibbling on fried things so they didn’t get kicked out of the izakaya before Kuroo arrived to take them all home.   

And Oikawa was right. Bokuto was miserable. He cried for a whole year. He cried until he was broke since he couldn’t hold down a job, he cried until he couldn’t bear to see anyone because he hated himself so much. After ten months, Akaashi left to stay with that old Karasuno captain and his girlfriend. After eleven, Kuroo would only speak to him once a week. Oikawa finally drug him to a therapist, and he cried there too.

But he learned to deal with it. And even though volleyball was gone forever, they came back.

 

 

 **_thirty_ ** _._

“Did you rent out this whole place just for my party, Keiji?”

“You have a lot of friends.”

“Yeah, but still, it’s real fancy.”

“Yes, how unlike me.”

 

Everyone was there. Everyone. The team from Fukurodani, at least half of Nekoma and Karasuno, including a three-year-old girl that Sawamura carried everywhere, despite Suga’s insistence he relax and let her down to play. His college team, the members of the national team from when he’d been on it. Oikawa, his grumpy porcupine husband, and the eight-year-old boy they’d adopted. His coworkers on the university’s coaching staff.

His enormous family. Keiji’s tiny one.

And so. much. food. 

It was completely over the top and Bokuto didn’t know how Keiji had managed to plan it. Well he knew _how_ , Keiji could probably plan a rocket launching into space, but the question was why. It had to be expensive, and he just didn’t see what would make Keiji want to do something so extravagant when Bokuto would have been perfectly happy with something a lot smaller.

But he wasn’t about to complain because it was the best party he’d ever been to and he was on top of the world.  

Their families spent most of the time talking over a huge spread of food, while he spent most of the time wandering from group to group catching up, telling old stories, talking about his job coaching the women’s team at the university. He bragged about Keiji’s job as a nurse, and Kuroo’s job as a pharmacist, and Kenma’s job as game developer, and even Ennoshita’s recent movie which he hadn’t even seen, only listened to Keiji go on about. Everyone in the room was his, and he could brag about them if he wanted.

Everybody was happy, old friends were meeting up, Tsukki and Shorty from Karasuno were even _laughing_ with each other. It was the most perfect night he could imagine.

He didn’t see Keiji much, just one moment where he seemed deep in conversation with Bokuto’s dad. He wanted to tell the guy to give Keiji some space instead of slapping his back so much, but he couldn’t because Oikawa wouldn’t shut up and his husband kept getting in the way, and that guy wasn’t the sort of person you could just walk around.

So he just let them talk.

 

“I’d like your attention please,” Kuroo said into a mic he’d scrounged up from somewhere in the restaurant. “See, my best friend’s just turned thirty, and usually this is the point where I’d give some kind of speech, talking about how great he is and how much we all like him, while simultaneously making fun of his hair and the fact that he has a catch phrase.”

“Hey, hey, hey, man, _c’mon_ ,” Bokuto was kind of pissed off about that last bit.

The lights went down a little, except the one directly over Kuroo’s head.

“But you’re not getting that speech tonight, my guy. C’mere, Bokuto I’ve got a birthday present for you.”

It wasn’t far to the small pool of light, but he still felt kind of weird, since he had no idea what was going on and Keiji had disappeared altogether.

No, actually he’d been standing behind Kuroo the whole time and now he was the one holding the mic. Bokuto was pretty certain he was going to pass out. Keiji wasn’t going to sing, was he?

He didn't sing.

“Koutarou,” he dropped down to one knee and held up a tiny pale blue box. There were at least a hundred and fifty people in the restaurant, and they were all staring at them.

“It has been a privilege to be by your side these past twelve years. I was hoping you might like to marry me, as I love you very much and can’t imagine a life without you in it.”

Bokuto didn’t mean to hit Kuroo in the face with Keiji’s foot when he spun him around, ring shining bright and happy on his finger. He definitely didn’t mean to break his nose. But it just kind of happened.

**_thirty-five._ **

“How can anyone be so little?”

He expected Keiji to say something about how their daughter’s head had been squeezed out of a vagina two weeks ago, but instead he just whispered, “I don’t know.”

She had black hair and black eyes. They had opened for just a second and the two of them had stared and stared as she stared back making those tiny little cooing baby noises that Bokuto had just brushed off as a myth.

“You’re so beautiful, Zu-chan,” he told the tiny girl in his arms, because she understood.

Keiji was crouched next to him, his face lightly pressed against the impossibly small bundle of blankets. He lifted his hand, then extended one shaking finger to gently caress her flushed, pimply cheek.

“I can’t believe you’re here, my darling.”

She yawned, which was the most adorable sound that anyone or anything had ever made in the history of the world. So it only made sense that they both teared up, wiping their eyes on their sleeves.

“You wanna hold her, Keiji?” Bokuto asked when he could talk again.

“Of course I do, but it’s your birthday, Kou. Hold her until you’re satisfied.”

The most generous present that anyone had ever given anybody ever.

“Well if that happens you’re never gonna get to do it. C’mere.” He scooched over in the chair as best he could, and with some work they fit side by side. He moved their daughter until she was between them, cuddled into their hands.

“Why does she keep breathing so fast? Is she okay? Did I move her wrong?”

“Newborns have uneven breathing patterns. It will even out as she gets older.”

He leaned into Keiji’s shoulder more than he needed to. “I’m so happy but… shit, everything about this is scary.”

Keiji turned his head to make eye contact.

“Koutarou, I’ve never been more terrified in my life.”

 

 

 **_fifty_ ** _._  

“How can anyone be so thoughtless?” Keiji raged, pacing back and forth in the kitchen. “She doesn’t have a strict curfew, we give her plenty of time to get home, she has a phone with a _very expensive_ data plan, and yet she doesn’t take the time to even email us when she’s going to be late?”

“It’s only an hour later than she said,” Bokuto responded from his seat at the table. His husband needed to calm down but he wasn’t the one to make him.

Keiji stopped and turned his head the way a praying mantis did before it ate a little bug. Bokuto felt like that little bug. 

“She is fifteen years old, and it is your _fiftieth_ birthday dinner.”

“Yeah, but…” he didn’t really know what to say after that. Because he was sort of disappointed she wasn’t there. Their food was cold, and Keiji wasn’t a very good cook, so he had worked real hard after a twelve-hour shift to make the fancy dinner that he had.

Keiji sat down next to him, his head in his hands. It made it a lot easier to see the streaks of silver that had been creeping in for the past while. “I have always considered myself a patient person, Koutarou, but I don’t understand what happened to our completely rational, pleasant daughter.”

The turn of the key in the door was ominous, mostly because Bokuto knew what was coming.

Another fight.

And it would start with Keiji, in his coldest, flattest voice.

“Bokuto Zuku, you are an hour late for your dad’s birthday dinner.”

Then, his daughter would pull up her hair into a ponytail and look at her father with the same flat look.

“My phone batteries died as I was looking for a present for Dad. I apologize.”

Keiji sighed tightly as he stood up, “Did your friends have a phone?”

“No. I was by myself.”

Bokuto tugged at his napkin while his daughter fiddled with her fingers in front of her waist, and his husband fiddled with them behind his back. He was so hungry, he’d just eat their cold meal and be happy about it. In fifty years this was the first shitty birthday he could remember (well other than that _one_ ), so he might as well be grateful for that.

“Why didn’t you just come home then?” The cold was crackling through the room and Bokuto was pretty certain his dinner was going to end up frozen.

“As I said, Father, I was buying Dad a birthday present. It was difficult to find, lines were long, and I lost track of time because my phone batteries were dead.”

Zuku thought he was being completely illogical, and Keiji thought she was being impossible. Something was going to happen any minute. Either an earthquake, or they would start to yell. The first one, Bokuto knew how to deal with. The second he still wasn’t sure about.

“Zuku, you need to show your dad and I more respect.”

And then they were yelling.

“Well I’m actually wondering what exactly is so _disrespectful_ about buying your parent a gift on a milestone birthday? What do you think, Dad?”

“I uh…”

“Well, Koutarou, I’d be interested in knowing your opinion on something: would you prefer your daughter be here to spend time with us, or would you rather get a present?”

“Can’t I get both?”

“No, apparently not. Thoughts, Zuku?”

“I told you the lines were long! Why don’t you just trust me? You never trust me, Father, and I have no idea what I could have done to make you feel like that.”

“Perhaps the fact that our dinner is cold on your dad’s birthday might be an indicator, _darling_.”

“Well, _Papa_ , maybe if you had gone to go get a present with me on Sunday when I asked then this wouldn’t have happened either!”

“I worked three twelve hour shifts in a row. Sunday was my day off, and I needed to rest or my back was going to act up again.”

“Why don’t you get another job then?”

“Because I don’t have a backup line of work. Why don’t you just quit school so you can dedicate yourself full time to the art of _slowly buying birthday_ _presents_.”

A terrifying silence fell, then Zuku scrounged through her satchel, pulled out a plastic bag and slammed it and its contents on the table.

“HAPPY BIRTHDAY DADDY!” she roared, turning on her heels and heading to her room. Keiji stood over the sink for about a minute, muttering, and then stomped off to their bedroom too.

Bokuto ate his cold birthday dinner by himself.

 

“I am a terrible father,” Keiji’s head was in his hands. He was all curled up on the bed and he looked so sad it hurt.

“Terrible fathers leave their kids all night alone with no food. Or hit them and shit.”

“Then I’m an unsatisfactory father.”

Bokuto sat down on the bed, “You know I can’t come up with more examples, but you’re a good dad. I’ll throw all your clothes in the bathtub if you don’t knock this shit off.”

Keiji chuckled for one quarter of a second. “I was inappropriately angry and sarcastic.”

“Not gonna argue there.”

“I just, I don’t know how to deal with her, Koutarou. Once she started middle school, I could relate to her. We spent so much time together, and I just thought that… well, now that she’s in high school, it’s like I don’t even know her. It’s like she’s a child again, but worse.”

“You do know her. That’s the problem. You know her a lot.”

“I knew you in high school and I had no problem…”

“Bein’ my dad?” Bokuto raised his eyebrow. “Didn’t know you were into that, baby.”

Keiji huffed as he tried to find a nice way to say what he wanted to say. He couldn’t.

“Handling you.”

“Well she’s not like me. She’s like you. And it’s real hard to fight with yourself when you’re a smart, independent, asshole.”

“Are you calling our daughter an asshole?”  

He reached forward and pulled his husband back into him so they were spooning.

“Sometimes.”

Keiji wiggled as he kissed his neck, then turned around, that hazy kinda suggestive look in his world-weary eyes. So sexy. He leaned in for a kiss…

Immediately there was a knock, followed by the door opening.

“Papa, I’m sorry that I…” Zuku dropped the apology mug of tea she’d been holding and it spilled all over the floor. “Oh. I thought you were sad but I guess I was mistaken.”

Bokuto jumped up hard enough to bounce Keiji on the bed, “Knock it off, you know he was sad. It’s my birthday, and I say that in exchange for ruining my dinner, you two have to talk. And you’re not allowed to be sarcastic, if you are I’ll know.”

“Of course you will,” Keiji said.

He was glad that they’d gotten that established.

 

There wasn’t anything good on television, so he just kind of stared at it, beer in one hand, remote in the other.

The next thing he knew, he was waking up because Zuku had thrown herself on top of him.

“We made up, now let’s eat cake,” she chanted.

Behind her, Keiji was holding up a chocolate cake with two wobbly sparklers in it. “Happy birthday, Koutarou.”

He was trying to sit up, but before he could, his daughter shoved the plastic bag in his face. “I’m sorry I didn’t find the time to wrap it, Dad, but here, open it up.”

Pulling away the plastic revealed a picture frame covered in a variety of different chibi owls, and inside it was his favorite picture of all time. There were at an amusement park, and somehow Keiji had gotten swamped by the overflow from a water ride. He was looking at his clothes in horror, while Bokuto and Zuku were laughing hysterically.

“This is the best birthday ever,” he started to cry because even though it wasn’t, he was old and he was allowed to say whatever he felt like.

They spent the rest of the night cuddled up on the couch, eating too much cake and watching absolutely nothing on television.

Maybe not the best birthday. But in the top ten.

 

 

 **_sixty_ ** _._  

She picked a western style wedding, because her fiancé was half Australian and because she wanted a poofy dress. That meant he and Keiji were in tuxes, which made him look fatter than he already was, and Keiji look even skinnier.

Kuroo said they looked devastating, but he was wearing a powder blue suit that made him look like a low level yakuza boss.  Kenma had decided to wear a wispy purple dress.

But Zuku liked all of them, so it was okay.

Keiji was adjusting his bowtie outside the prep room when Jack’s homophobic busybody aunt said that they could come in. She'd made them stay outside like she’d been the one who changed her diapers and bought her tampons and told her that her boobs didn’t look uneven or weird. But it was kind of nice to have the finished reveal anyway. Their daughter's hair was piled up in a really pretty pile. Sparkles in all the right places, makeup that made her eyes look like that one stone, what was it?

“Onyx,” Keiji told him without being prompted.

“Do you think it’s too much?” she asked, turning around and looking like a magical beautiful cupcake princess.

Keiji shook his head, and Bokuto told her she could have a lot more sparkles and it would still be okay. Only he called them sprinkles because they were on his mind.

Walking her down the aisle was not so good. Bokuto walked too fast, and Keiji walked too slow and she kind of shuffled in the middle, giggling to herself like she was drunk. Kuroo gave more thumbs up than it was possible to give, and Kenma had left his phone in the car and instead brought a real camera to take pictures.

Jack was shorter than she was, and handsomer than Oikawa, and he looked nervous enough to die when Keiji looked him in the eye. They gave her away without stepping on her gown or falling down the steps, then took their place in the first pew. It felt so weird, everyone looking at them when she was _theirs_.

That’s when Keiji started to cry. And he didn’t stop, not the entire time, just held onto Bokuto’s sleeve and shook like a leaf. Kenma passed them little packets of tissues, twice. Kuroo had to be crying behind them because he blew his nose so loud in the middle of the vows that the bride and groom had to stop for a minute. Bokuto cried too, but then everybody expected that. 

 

They got just the right amount of drunk afterwards. Kuroo had a drinking contest with a tiny Australian relative and she drank him under the table. Kenma took pictures of that, and the rest of the party. Bokuto gave advice about love to almost everyone and Keiji gave out hugs to whoever was left. Tight and warm and happy while he whispered little nonsense things like a crazy old man.

They were getting there and it felt better than he’d ever expected.

 

 

 **_seventy_ ** _._

“Keiji-ojiichan, Mei took my mochi!!!” the little boy whined, fat tears running down his cheeks as he ran clumsily across the porch, crayon in hand.

“What do you think I should do about that, Tomo?” Keiji sat down on the edge of the decking, slowly. He winced three quarters of the way down. Bokuto went to help him at the first sign of trouble, but he waved him off.

“Tell her to give it back,” the boy shook his brown curls assertively.

Keiji patted his head, “Do you think you still want it?” He tipped his chin toward the little redheaded girl who was happily gnawing on the gummy green treat.

Tomo plopped himself down next to his grandfather and started to cry in earnest, “No. But I _wanted_ it.”

“Why do you think she took it?”

“Because she’s mean, and I hate her.”

“Is she really? Do you think she understands?”

The two of them looked down to see the little girl smash the mochi in the dirt then bring it to her mouth. Bokuto jumped off the porch in his bare feet to keep that from happening.

“No,” the four-year-old giggled, then whispered something in Keiji’s ear, tragedy forgotten.

Keiji stood up again, even slower than before. Even with one-year-old pulling on his ear, Bokuto could have easily helped him get back up, bad shoulder and all. But Keiji never wanted that kind of help. So he just watched as they went back into the house, Tomo running and Keiji slowly following behind.

“You know I think he’s even prettier, now that he’s all wise,” he told his granddaughter, who smeared spit and snot all over his cheek. “Thanks, Mei-chan. I'm glad you agree.”

The bottom half of her made a tremendous sound.

“I take it back, I don’t trust anyone with a forty-year-old man living in her ass.”

“Ass,” she growled in her husky little voice, punching him in the face repeatedly.

  

“Koojiichan, happy birthday!”

He handed the baby off to Keiji then crouched down so he was even with the shining eyes of his grandson.  

“You’re super old. Keiji-ojiichan said you’re leventeen of me. So I drew you this,” he handed over a picture proudly, “so you 'member.”

He took the paper, flipped it around, and then laughed out loud.

“Don’t laugh! I worked hard!” Tomo pouted. He was such a sensitive little guy.

Bokuto reached out and swept his grandson up into his arms. “I was laughing cause I love it, little man. Lemme make sure I’ve got it right.” He pointed in the middle where there were two large blobs and two small, “So that’s you, and your sister and your mom and dad, right?”

Tomo nodded.

“And then over here,” he pointed to a stick with white on the top, “that’s Keiji-ojiichan, right?”

“Yeah, cause he has white hair. Wasn't a color shiny enough so I pressed hard.”

“And all around here,” he pointed at blob after blob, topped with grey and black, “these are all me? Leventeen of em?”

Tomo nodded, “You got it! You’re smart, even though you’re an old guy.”

“Oh, I know. I figured that out awhile back. Before I was an old guy.”

“How do you figure that out?” the boy scrunched up his nose.

Bokuto sat down, then lay back, holding his grandson over his head where he wiggled and squealed.

“Somebody’s gotta love you, I think.”

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this in a day, sorry for the commas.


End file.
